Roubaix (France) (AFP) - Mathieu van der Poel has put Olympic and world championship agony behind him in 2023, a season already crowned with two of road cycling's most treasured trophies.
The 28-year-old cross-discipline cycling champion ended the 2022 season with an overnight stay at an Australian police station after a teenage prank at his hotel went horribly wrong during the world championships.
Prior to that the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider also got things painfully wrong at the Tokyo Olympic Games after failing to realise on a training ride that a ramp would be removed on the big day.
Flying downhill on the first lap of the mountain bike gold medal race he injured his back on the section where this ramp had been removed.
But the 2023 one-day season is turning out to be Van der Poel's crowning moment with a recent triumph at Milan-SanRemo, a narrow miss at the Tour of Flanders a week ago and Sunday's convincing display at the Paris-Roubaix cobbled classic to ensure a fourth triumph in epic one-day races known as Monuments.
The straight-talking Dutch powerhouse denied he had drawn inspiration from his night in the cells in Australia after he chased two teenagers back to their room after a persistent late-night knock-a-door-run prank.
Police were called and on the eve of what could have been his defining day, his best laid plans lay in tatters.
"Australia was certainly a low point but I wouldn't say I found inspiration in it," said Van der Poel, who was the favourite to win the men's road race in Australia.
He showed up at the start line without having slept or having informed his team what had happened, began the race but pulled out shortly after.
"I was ready for the worlds so what happened there was certainly a low point," he conceded.
'Best classic season ever'
But he said that overcoming the incident on Mount Fuji at the Olympics was more important.
"Now I have my confidence," said a man rarely presumed to be short of that precious commodity.
"And my back problems are much better than they were.
"I'm riding without pain and I think this is the main difference," said Van der Poel, who comes from a family of top cyclists as his father and grandfather were peloton stars before him.
"It's my best classic season ever," he continued.
"That was my greatest moment on a bike," he said at the finish line after the gruelling 258km race featuring some 55km of rough hew cobbles.
"We race like juniors at full speed all day," explained the man who usually prefers cyclo-cross where he is a five-time world champion.
"To come into the velodrome alone was wonderful, I had the time to let it all sink in," said Van der Poel, who cried briefly as he crossed the line.
Roubaix is a huge event in France and the race is one of five extremely arduous road races known as Monuments.
He won the first one Milan-SanRemo a month ago before narrowly missing out on a third straight Tour of Flanders, seen in road cycling as an unofficial world championships.
The two others are the Ardennes forest run Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Tour of Lombardy in northern Italy.
